This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Greetings, friends and listeners. I'd like to welcome you back to Side Hustle School, or perhaps welcome you if you're totally new. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is our weekly recap, episode 316, week number 45 of the year. If you're just joining us every day during the week, I tell a different true story of someone who creates a second source of income, or let's say an additional source of income because it might be their third or fourth or more.
This show is focused on busy people who don't have a ton of time and probably work a job, probably have lots of other responsibilities as well, don't necessarily want to be an entrepreneur, but believe in the principle of investing in themselves. They want to have more security, more options, more choices for themselves, and creating a side hustle is a great way to do that. So I'm trying to teach through storytelling. I hope you learn something every day on the show. That's my goal. Over here in my world, I was in Pittsburgh over the past week. I'm going to
Minneapolis next week. It's been so fun to meet lots of listeners on this tour. Just about every night, people are coming up and saying that they've been listening since January 1, which I think is amazing. Hearing lots of stories of side hustles that have started during the year because of the show. And of course, lots of other people are still in the idea stage. That's also totally fine.
I do want you to take action, not just be inspired, but I also understand sometimes it's a process, sometimes you got some other stuff going on in your life. So my hope is that the show will still be here for you whenever you're ready. And of course, keep listening. Enjoy it. Now, speaking of being on the road, the other night I heard a great question from someone. They were talking specifically about
reselling. And we tend to break the different side hustles down into categories, both on the show and in the side hustle book. So you've got service-based businesses, product-based businesses, manufacturing, education, the arts. And you also got this category of reselling, which is essentially like buying an item and then reselling it for a higher price. Like the episode we had on Monday about the lollipop merchant of Northern Queensland, Australia. Lucy in that episode is essentially
buying low and selling high. She's doing it with lollipops at her high school, but it really is the same principle no matter what you're doing. And this person was wondering like, do I have to be passionate about whatever it is that I'm buying and selling? I thought this was such a smart question because I do often talk about being motivated to do something, being excited about something, looking forward to your side hustle because it's really not a good thing if your side hustle is something that you dread or you just don't want to do it, but you do it because you feel like you have to. Like we all have stuff like that in life that we have to do. You probably have
some stuff like that in your job, even if you like your job. So for the most part, I do think you want to make sure you create something that you can look forward to and anticipate and be excited about. Now that said, the industry or the category of reselling is a bit different. In that category, where you're buying stuff and then reselling it, lots of different ways to do that. There's a bunch of listeners who are going out to thrift shops and yard sales buying things there and then reselling them on eBay or Gumtree or Craigslist or other platforms. Other people are doing it completely
online or they find a way to buy items online and have those items dropship to people. There's a model called Fulfilled by Amazon, where amazon.com will actually ship your items for you. However it is that you're doing it, oftentimes people who are really good at this or people who are drawn to this kind of side hustle, it doesn't really matter what the products are necessarily. They're just more excited about the buying and selling and the figuring things out and like getting a deal on something and then reselling that for a higher price. That process itself is exciting and fulfilling. So way back when I got started like 20 years ago in this whole little world,
I would buy and sell things on eBay. And one of the first little businesses I had was buying and selling coffee. I was importing coffee and then reselling it throughout the United States and Canada. And I liked coffee then just as I do now, but I wouldn't say I'm like amazingly passionate about it and certainly not when I was 19 or 20. It was just something I could learn about and then profit from. Similarly, I sold a bunch of other stuff. I sold Lego sets for a while
because I had found this way to buy Lego sets for less than what people were paying for them online. And I know there's a whole category of adult fans of Lego. I think Lego is pretty cool, but it's not my hobby. It's not something that I'm personally passionate about. So if you're interested in buying and reselling stuff, like it helps to know something about that topic. So very
often it may be something that you're passionate about, but I also think it's totally cool if it's some other weird industry. One of my friends famously did this whole business of cat furniture. And this particular friend wasn't even a cat person. He had just found a way to create a cat furniture empire. And every day he looked forward to building that business a little bit in between his day job. So I do think it's always important to find like what's best for you. There's lots of
different things you could do in life, lots of different side hustle ideas you're going to have, especially if you listen to the show over time or if you go through the side hustle book. Once you start thinking for yourself, like ideas are not going to be your problem. But like a lot of things in life, there's more than one way to accomplish this process. And most important is to find what works for you. All right, before we go any further, I want to check in with another listener who called in to leave a message. And just a reminder, you can do that too. If you have a question or
comment, just call the hustle hotline 8 4 4 9 hustle that's 8 4 4 9 4 8 7 8 5 3. And we usually play at least one message during the recap, sometimes some others during the week as well. So let's hear from that listener and see what's going on. Hi, Chris, this is Steven calling from New York again. I have a question this time. I'm wondering if you can kind of explain how someone might end
this subscription program. I think a lot of people might have a fear that if they start something with a subscription model, which you've mentioned many times on the show, it seems like, like a commitment, like a long term kind of forever commitment. What if the side hustle doesn't work, or you get tired of doing it or some other reason you want to stop? Are you locked in forever and ever? That's the question. You know, kind of, it's a little bit fear based, but I think it's
also realistic. So if you could address that, that'd be awesome. Thank you. Bye. Hey, Steven, thanks so much for listening. And for the great question. Yeah, I think there could
be all kinds of reasons to end a subscription service. Just like you said, if it's not working, or if you're tired of it, you want to do something different. And I think it just goes back to whatever commitment you made to people who signed up. That's not normally like a lifelong commitment. It's normally like you're going to pay once a month and you're going to get this service each month and you can cancel at any time. And I can probably cancel on the other end too. And that's
normal. Now you might want to go through a process of winding down. You might not want to just, you know, stop it right away. It could be good to over deliver, maybe give people a free month, give people something that they haven't paid for. But I think for the most part with a subscription service, once you stop taking people's money, they can't really have an expectation that you're going to keep giving them the service. Now, just on a side note, it seems you're talking about this
in terms of starting a new project. Because you mentioned like fear based, what if it doesn't work out am I locked into this commitment? It might be good in that case to give yourself a little bit of an on-ramp. So you can kind of announce the subscription service and give yourself, you know, 30 days, 60 days, whatever, before you have to begin delivering the content or whatever the service is. And during that time, you can work on accruing subscribers or members.
So it's not just like launch tomorrow and you get one customer and you have to spend all your time providing a service for one customer. And you thought there was going to be like a hundred or something. That's just a side note. But as you probably know, subscription business is a great way to go. Recurring revenue is wonderful. So if you have a model that would lend itself well to
that, unless you have a really good reason not to do it, I'm not sure why you'd want to avoid it. All right. So looking back on this week, I just want to pull out a couple of highlights. I'm not going to tell you about each episode. I would encourage you to go back and listen to them.
You can do that in Apple podcasts or directly on the sidehustleschool.com site. All those archives are completely free. There's also a once a month extended episode. You can read about those on sidehustleschool.com/extended. But specifically this week, I mentioned episode three 10, the 13 year old Australian who creates a schoolyard lollipop fortune. I thought we'd have
a lot of interesting comments on that. And I was right. My good friend Gretchen Rubin also published that episode in her happier project feed. So if you've come over from Gretchen show, welcome. Side hustle school is part of the onward project that Gretchen founded. And then the next episode
as well about a former construction inspector who earns $200,000 helping students pass exams. He's actually earned more than $200,000. That's just what this year's income is going to be. At the top of the show, I was talking about reselling this episode. This story is very much about teaching, about taking a skill that you have and transferring knowledge. In this case,
it was a teacher himself who had gotten burned out and entered a new career as a construction inspector. And then notice that the inspection industry puts a lot of emphasis on certifications and examinations for those certifications. And so he used his teaching skills as well as his new construction inspector skills to create this series of courses that would help other people entering the profession. This is exactly the kind of project that I like to focus on side hustle school because this guy is building an asset for himself or he has built an asset. He's continuing to, but the asset is already there. He did this by using his skills and focusing on helping other
people, like finding that intersection between like what he was good at and what other people wanted. So I would definitely encourage you to listen to that one if you have not already. In our interview with him, he also talked a fair amount about creating points of difference. And in his case, he was referring to competitors or other people who taught these kinds of courses. He said like nobody was on YouTube. So he started doing some tutorials on YouTube.
He would actually send his customers a copy of building plans in the mail, even though his course was mostly virtual and online. And he said nobody else was doing that either. So basically he paid attention to what wasn't being done well or what nobody had thought of. But the fundamental model of that kind of project, creating a course and selling it is pretty basic. It's all about the implementation and the positioning. Like you have an idea,
but how do you turn it into a good course and get it out to people? And then how do you communicate with the people who need it in a way that reassures them, overcomes their objections and gets them excited about purchasing the course. Anyway, there's a lot we could say about that one, but this is the recap. Later in the week, we featured someone who works in marketing and earns $30,000 a year on the side as a DJ, which I thought was a great little juxtaposition. It reminded me of the guy in Dubai who is an accountant by day, a managerial accountant for a large corporation. But he has this side hustle producing poetry workshops and actually gets paid
for it, which is notable in itself, of course, in the world of poetry. Oh, and also I wanted to mention episode 312, which was the Mexican artist who becomes a YouTube superstar with 50 million views. This one's kind of similar to that construction inspector story, because he's using something that he knows, in this case, it was drawing, and he's transferring that knowledge to people online. Now, in his case, he's not doing a course, he's putting all these tutorials up for free on YouTube. But because so many people are watching them, he's actually getting paid a lot through the advertising money. So just like I said earlier, with the other situation,
there's more than one way to do things. The whole goal is to find what's best for you. Looking ahead to next week, I've got another exciting set of stories for you, including the lifelong Girl Scout who earns her side hustle badge. Did you know there was a side hustle badge in the Girl Scouts? Well, we just made that up, but she earned it. And not only that,
she earns $3,500 a month in her side hustle. It might even be more valuable than the side hustle badge. There's also a story of a student who finds a way to help people affordably rent their adventures. How do you rent an adventure? Well, I'll tell you about it in this story.
The student's goal is to create Airbnb for adventures. And there's an office worker who sells custom design mugs earning an extra $500 a month without a ton of work. And she started this with literally $0 in startup costs. So of course, that's pretty good. Hard to beat $0.
Now, as we close things out, I just want to say thank you to everybody who's a part of this community. You guys are amazing. You're the reason I make this show. I'd like to say thanks as well to our production team. That team is led by AC Valdez, also features Odelia Rubin, who I believe is going to be working on some other projects going forward. So big thanks to Odelia and all
that she's done over the past few months. We've got a new person joining soon. I'll mention her next week. Back in Portland, Oregon, show notes are by my assistant, Whitney Karinek. And of course, I can't forget the official show cat Libby Gillibough, who is in charge of responding to negative comments. Not that we get many of them. I'm just saying if you have one, she's the person to address
those too. If you're enjoying the show, I'm always grateful for those who take a moment to give us a quick little rating or review in Apple podcasts. That's awesome. And the most awesome thing you can do is help spread the word. Tell people about Side Hustle School. You can tell them online,
you can send them to sidehustleschool.com. If you use the hashtag side hustle school, I'll probably see it somewhere in social media. But it's also great to just tell your friends whenever you're talking about stuff and ask them, do you have a side hustle? Have you heard about this? This is not just about working harder. It's not about getting a part time job. It's about
making something cool for yourself that also makes money. And the show can tell you how to do it. I always appreciate listeners who help us with that. And in every episode, I always say that inspiration is good, but action is better. My hope is that you'll take action on what you hear and learn.
I look forward to hearing about you doing that. Perhaps I'll see you on tour somewhere. I'm still out and about you go to sidehustleschool.com/tour you can see where I'm going. And if I don't see you in person, I hope to see you tomorrow and every day next week with more stories and actionable ideas. Those episodes go online at 6 0 1 a.m. Eastern time every day. I'm Chris Guillebeau for side hustle
school.
